in: re: this extremely topical post by @based--ball that's going around, here is some well-articulated wisdom from jamie mackay on the WPBL podcast:
TORONTO MIKE: Do you think a woman will ever play in MLB? JAMIE MACKAY: You know, I think so. There's a lot of thought that goes behind that. My main thought being that, you know, we don't see a lot of— people are like, "Okay well, if girls are supposedly good at baseball, then why don't we see them in college and in D1 and playing consistently?" and it's like, well, you really haven't given them the avenue to do that! If you keep telling girls that their only way to get through college and into a professional career is through softball, what do you think they're gonna do? They're gonna get into softball earlier and they're gonna start training softball earlier. So imagine we have a girl that was just born and bred to play baseball and gets all the support she needs and is able to train with the boys, like the boys, gets all the resources that the men get—there's no ceiling to what a woman can do when she is able to be given all those resources. [...] Sunday, some of the WPBL players went to Angels Stadium and Samantha Gutierrez threw out a first pitch, and we were taking pictures with the guy who caught, and I think it was Wade Meckler, he's a left fielder. And I'm standing on the left side of him, and I look at him, and— [laughs] he's shorter than I am! I was like, "Ain't no WAY this dude is" [Ashton laughs]—not to shoutout Wade Meckler, like, dude, you're a fantastic baseball player—this man's 5'9 and a half, probably a buck eighty. I'm like— [gestures at herself] it's the same here! Like, I'm taller than you, I probably weigh as much as you. If I had access to the amount of resources and everything and training that he throughout his whole career...there's no DOUBT, no doubt in my mind that a girl could eventually get to the major leagues.
